


Je le pansai, Dieu le guérit

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, possibly it is not even a shipfic, this is not a fic for romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:25:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9575741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: Personne n'échappe à mon regard.The cracks in the mirror extend down her reflection’s nose and across both eyes. A perfect T shape that warps her face. Her eyes are obscured, her nose broken and crooked, only her mouth remains a perfect image. She presses her fingertips to the glass, feeling the smoothness that puckers and dips into the crooked lines and cracks. It tears into her skin, just enough to draw blood but it’s cold enough in the bathroom that she barely feels it.When did she break the glass?





	

The cracks in the mirror extend down her reflection’s nose and across both eyes. A perfect T shape that warps her face. Her eyes are obscured, her nose broken and crooked, only her mouth remains a perfect image. She presses her fingertips to the glass, feeling the smoothness that puckers and dips into the crooked lines and cracks. It tears into her skin, just enough to draw blood but it’s cold enough in the bathroom that she barely feels it.

When did she break the glass? (There was a large mirror that hung on the west wall of the master bedroom. It was adjacent to the window, something about the space and light was supposed to give the room a larger, more luxurious feel. In the morning, he would stand there and adjust his cufflinks — always with the same precise flick of the wrist, index finger and thumb twisting in efficient small movements. She liked to watch him from bed, curled around the warmth he left in the sheets.

A mirror hung on the west wall of the master bedroom. There was a dark wood wardrobe, the bed had a headboard with scrolls and overflowing cornucopias engraved on it. They had ordered that special, a down payment in March. The sheets.

A mirror hung on the wall in the bedroom. The sheets were white and navy blue. And red.

A mirror hung on the wall in the bedroom. In the morning she would stand in front of it and practice her curtsy.) It didn’t matter. She draws her hand away from the glass and watches her lips curl into a very thin smile. There is work to be done.

—

The rifle settles into her arms like it’s part of her. When she isn’t working she feels lighter than air, untethered and too empty, it’s like she’ll escape gravity and float into the cold expanse of space. More than an old friend, her hand wraps around the grip like a rescuer’s hold and the stock settles against her like an encouraging embrace. 

The target she hunts has already been excavated by her. The memory is coded and stored in a box with a ribbon in her mind. Every now and then she removes it from the shelf, unties the bow and relives it again and again. (In her bed, in the cold room with no mirror, no dresser and only a bed, sink and locker for her gear, she remembered. The city of Dantzig was warm in the summer and the wind carried both the scent of the fresh water river carrying sun heated dust and the ocean’s briny fish scale and salt smell. She ignored it all. She didn’t sweat, there were no distractions from her perch on the tall building overlooking the docks. Just earlier she had passed through the St. Dominic’s Fair, brushed shoulders with unimportant people. Their noise had rolled through her ears like heartbeats. Ten, twenty, a hundred people who could just so easily become victims.

She set her hand against her thigh — she set her finger against the trigger. Her shoulder rolled forward — she readjusted the rifle on her shoulder. She remembered seeing her target step out from the alley, crouched and moving with care — she smiled. She tracked Ana Amari from shipping crate to shipping crate to the edge of the boat that she would have taken for escape — she navigated around her own clit, teased herself with anticipation.

Cavitation is the measurement of the cavity produced by ballistics. A bullet shot through the skull first perforates the skin and after the initial piercing it pulls with it a force and explosion that blossoms and tears through bone and brain.

She came to red stars painted on the back of her eyelids, the memory of clean up crews picking bone and grey matter off of the ground, the thrum of satisfaction at a perfect kill — right through the eye socket.

She almost felt alive, just by remembering.)

It had only been recently that she had seen her old (mentor) victim alive again. The box fell off of its shelf and she hadn’t bothered to pick it up again. In fact, she had nothing but excitement. Never had she killed the same person twice. Anticipation brought her pulse to just underneath her skin, an uneven beat that she had felt before.

The temple ruins give her perfect sightlines, so she lines up the shot. Her finger curls at the same pace that her smile does. _Dans ma ligne de mire._ She pulls the trigger just as Ana’s head turns toward her — perhaps she can shoot the other eye out this time.

She can almost hear it, an Arabic phrase that meant ‘sleep’. She does hear the piercing sound of the dart and feels it settle into her chest, just as she hears the sound of her own bullet hit the wall where Ana’s head was.

She dreams. 

—

(In another meeting with death. They went to the ballet. He had held her hand to his lips and made a bow that she repeated, only slightly more mocking. It was a joke between them. She could not say that she was in love, but that they were two well-matched people. When they hugged his sidearm pressed through his suit jacket and her sequin dress.)

(In another meeting with death, she had shot him on the balcony of their shared home. His body collapsed and slumped across the railing while his blood poured and poured and poured across the white marble.)

(In another meeting, Ana’s hand is steady against her shoulder and her advice is sound. Take your time. Breathe. You have a natural talent but only hard work will make you truly good. There you are. Perfect.)

(The person she sees in the mirror is unfamiliar, but has her smile.)

—

“I expected better,” Ana says, when she wakes. She feels too light, the rifle is not held in her hands, not slung across her back, not resting against her thigh, her elbow, anywhere near her. She has lost half of her body mass because the gun is nowhere near her.

“Is this words of advice from a long dead legend?” She smiles.

“Whatever happened to ‘one shot, one kill’? You were a better student than you are a professional.” Ana makes a soft clucking noise, tongue tapping against the roof of her mouth in admonishment.

“You should have stayed dead, but I won’t waste this opportunity to put you in the ground again.”

“Everyone dies, Amélie.” Ana stands, there’s a tiredness to her body that sends a spark of information through her. A vulnerable point at the left elbow, the blind spot caused by her missing eye, simply the fact that old muscle were slower than her own. “But you know that already, don’t you? Playing such games doesn’t suit either of us, but I can’t say I’m too ungrateful. But remember, give me too many chances and even your skill will run out.”

“Are you accusing me of missing?” She is incredulous.

“Someday, Amélie, we’ll have our rematch.” Ana’s amusement is in her voice, her face is almost mask-like. (She always sounded far too much like a mother.)

Her heart beats faster. “Every legend falls, you’ll have the honor of falling twice.” She says and with the grace of a dancer stands, eyes scanning for the familiar silhouette of her rifle. It’s there, the opposite side of the square. Three seconds to get it, one to turn and aim, but far too many to beat Ana’s own shots.

“My shots also find their marks.” Ana salutes, steps back into an alcove. 

She crosses the distance to her rifle, dropping her recon visor and turning. She catches Ana’s silhouette slipping down through a complicated series of tunnels beneath the temple.

_Allez, montre-toi._ And the hunt was on again.

—

When did she break the glass? She remembers — a single bullet traveling through the air through the scope on Ana’s biotic rifle. Her own distant sense of satisfaction. Being able to watch, through her scope, the spray of blood.

In her memory, she embellishes. She hears Ana’s breathing, going from a sniper’s even trained inhales to sharp and pained to evening out as the body caught up with the damage done to the brain. The glass that must have traveled down the scope into the cavity the bullet hollowed out.

She remembers, her breath catches, a beautiful death paints her fingers, the inside of her eyelids, runs through her nerves in a current of pleasure. She might have been alive in that moment.


End file.
